Surrey Archaeological Collections
Surrey Archaeological Society, 2003. (updated 2023) https://doi.org/10.5284/1000221. How to cite using this DOI
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- ADS Collection: 379
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000221
- How to cite using this DOI
SURREY ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS
Green Lane, Wanborough: excavations at the Roman religious site 1999
DAVID WILLIAMS
Following a geophysical survey of the field to the south of the known Romano-Celtic square temple a series of trial trenches was opened. Pre-Roman activity was largely confined to what may be a ritual well or shaft that appears to be connected to the site occupied by the later temples by a curving trackway, thought to be ceremonial. To the west of the square temple an apparent ditch terminal was succeeded by a small, probably circular, enclosure, at the centre of which may have been a prominent tree. This phase, which began in the middle of the 1st century AD, was associated with the burial of lambs and other votive deposits and might have been the focus for the coin hoard deposited c AD50--60, and which was robbed and largely dispersed in the 1980s.
This phase was succeeded before the middle of the 2nd century by a hitherto unsuspected flint-built temple of sub-circular form with an eastern entrance porch and possibly a wooden floor and which appears to be a formalisation of the plan of the earlier enclosure. This temple appears to have suffered a dramatic structural failure and seems to have collapsed partially shortly after construction. The circular temple was quickly replaced, following a re-dedication ceremony, by the square temple in about AD160/170. In any event it had been dismantled by the late 2nd century and its site largely respected by later activity, with the exception of a few, possibly ritually positioned, pits. Later activity is confined to the construction of a parish boundary bank across the site and an associated small group of medieval pennies, which may indicate a memory of the religious site.
